Group items tagged

"to follow the Constitution and precedent in considering the President's nominee, and if the nominee reaches the Senate floor he intends "to vote based upon their qualifications."

Romney's support for moving ahead means that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is all but certain to have the 51 votes he needs to take up the nomination. Just two GOP senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, have said they oppose taking up the president's nominee to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a presidential election year.

"I've indicated that what I intend to do is to proceed with the consideration process and if a nominee actually reaches the floor, then I will vote based upon the qualifications of that nominee," he said.

(CNN)Two news stories dominated the headlines this week. The ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine reached its one month mark. And the Senate hosted confirmation hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to join the Supreme Court. It's with the Jackson confirmation hearings that we begin our statistical journey into the news of the week.

If Jackson's ratings hold up through her likely confirmation, she would be the most popular nominee to be confirmed since John Roberts in 2005. Jackson's popularity should only help her in the confirmation process. Read MoreA few years ago, I built a statistical model to help understand why senators vote the way they do on Supreme Court nominees. The model took into account variables such as a nominee's qualifications, the ideology of the nominee and the senator, etc.

A lot of that may have had to do with the fact that he was popular. Thomas had a +33-point net popularity rating among Americans, according to an average of polling taken before he was confirmed.

The larger picture is that, individual metrics aside, recent presidents have fared similarly with circuit courts.

The district courts, where federal trials occur, are a different story. There, Democratic presidents really have had a harder time winning Senate confirmation for their nominees.

The Senate failed to confirm only 3 percent of Mr. Bush’s district court nominees through June of his fifth year in office (and 1 percent by the end of his presidency). The fifth-year failure rate for Mr. Clinton was 11 percent, and it has been 8 percent for Mr. Obama. If every recent president had a confirmation rate as high as Mr. Bush’s, Democrats might have placed 25 more trial judges on the federal bench.

The White House is considering picking the Republican governor from Nevada to fill the current vacancy on the Supreme Court, scrambling political calculations in what is expected to be a contentious confirmation battle in which Senate Republicans have pledged to play the role of roadblock.

President Obama is weighing the selection of Brian Sandoval, a centrist former federal judge who has served as governor since 2011, according to two people familiar with the process

Though the review process is in its initial phases and it is unclear whether the governor could ultimately emerge as the president’s pick, even the prospect of his nomination poses a difficult dilemma for Senate Republicans who have promised not to consider any nomination before November’s elections.

President Donald Trump has been impeached again -- the first leader in US history to be impeached twice by the House.

Impeachment in a two-part process. The House introduces and passes the articles of impeachment, but the Senate is where the person being impeached faces a trial -- and potential punishment.

The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present. (Article 1, Section 3)

While many Democratic activists may regard Mitch McConnell as an all-powerful bogeyman, there is little that the Republican Senate minority leader from Kentucky can do to stop President Biden from nominating the next Supreme Court justice.

While many Democratic activists may regard Mitch McConnell as an all-powerful bogeyman, there is little that the Republican Senate minority leader from Kentucky can do to stop President Biden from nominating the next Supreme Court justice.

Republicans hope to take back the Senate majority in the midterm elections this fall, and McConnell had already signaled last summer that if that were to happen, he would likely block any attempt by Biden to nominate a justice to an open Supreme Court seat.

Start here: Eighteen states plus the District of Columbia have voted for the Democratic presidential nominee in every election between 1992 and 2012. Add them up, and you get 242 electoral votes.

What that means in practical terms is that if Clinton wins the 19 states that every Democratic nominee dating to her husband has won and she wins Florida (29 electoral votes), she wins the White House. It’s that simple.

But to do so ignores recent history. Barack Obama won 365 electoral votes in 2008 and 332 in 2012.

Defense secretary nominee Mattis warns world order under historic threat

Defense secretary nominee Gen. James Mattis issued a grave warning Thursday at his Senate confirmation hearing, saying the established world order is under its “biggest attack” since World War II as he called for boosting military readiness and America’s alliances.

Citing Russia’s aggressions and other concerns, he said: “I think [the world order is] under the biggest attack since World War II … from Russia, from terrorist groups and with what China is doing in the South China Sea.”

x Republicans have a massive electoral map problem that has nothing to do with Donald Trump

Politico reported today on a Florida poll conducted for a business group in the state that shows Hillary Clinton beating Donald Trump by 13 points and Ted Cruz by nine.

Here's what that map would look like:

Scott Pruitt confirmed to EPA

The Senate confirmed Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency, an agency Republicans desperately want to rein in after what they charge was eight years of dangerous activism under the Obama administration that hurt businesses, jobs and the economy.

Next up will be Commerce nominee Wilbur Ross, Interior nominee Ryan ZInke, Housing and Urban Development nominee Dr. Ben Carson, and Energy nominee Rick Perry.

Some Republican senators and a few Democrats as well are starving the federal courts of the trial judges they need to serve the basic legal need

One federal-trial seat in Texas has been vacant for 1,951 days, to give just one example. The absence of these judges, in one district after another around the country, has created a continuing vacuum of federal authority that is a kind of secession, because federal law without judges to impose it in a timely way is no federal law at all.

A recent study from the Center for American Progress identified a backlog of more than 12,000 federal cases exists in Texas alone because the two current senators there, both conservative Republicans and ardent foes of the Obama Administration's legal views, have slow-walked trial judge nominations.

Hirono regards the traditional moral views of the Knights as “extreme positions.” The difficulty with this line of reasoning is that they are exactly the same positions of the Catholic Church itself

So why wouldn’t a judge’s membership in the Catholic Church — with its all-male clergy, opposition to abortion and belief in traditional marriage — be problematic as well?

The difficulty with a reductio ad absurdum comes when people no longer find it absurdum. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has made the argument bluntly. In raising concerns in 2017 about appeals court nominee Amy Coney Barrett’s Catholic faith, Feinstein said, “When you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you.”

We go on endlessly about how “untrustworthy” she is, while fact checkers rank her as the second-most honest prominent politician in the country. (And her opponent as by far the least.)

History is decidedly unafraid of “the woman card.” It doesn’t care how many people will stand on tables today and swear they’d feel the same if she were a man. It will see us for what we are—a sick society, driven by misogyny and pathetically struggling to come to terms with the fact that women do not exist solely to nurture.

When Mitt Romney wiped servers, sold government hard drives to his closest aides and spent $100,000 in taxpayer money to destroy his administration’s emails, it was barely an issue.

t was a startling omission, even according to the peculiar moral norms of the Trump era. When Wendy Vitter, one of the US president’s judicial nominees, was asked whether she supported the supreme court’s 1954 Brown v Board of Education decision to end racial segregation in schools – a near sacred pillar of progress for civil rights in the 20th century – she did not say yes.

With just over a year in office, Donald Trump has already appointed 21 of America’s 167 current circuit judges and intends to fill an additional 20 or more vacancies by the end of the year. He is far outpacing Barack Obama, whose 21st circuit court nominee was approved 33 months into his presidency amid gridlock in Congress. Seventeen of Trump’s nominees for district courts, most of whom replaced Democratic appointees, have also been approved by the Republican-controlled Senate.

“This is stunning,” said Christopher Kang, former deputy counsel to Barack Obama, who for more than four years was in charge of the selection, vetting and confirmation of Obama’s judicial nominees. “Conservatives are using the courts to bring us back to a time when ‘religious liberty’ allowed discrimination. We’re seeing legal arguments we had hoped were consigned to the dustbin of history being dusted off and used again in the hope of turning back the clock on the way we treat all Americans.” Four cases relating to Trump’s ban on transgender personnel in the military are working their way through the courts. Employment and housing protections for LGBT individuals could be at risk. Battles over reproductive rights are also under way at state level. Last month a federal appeals court blocked an Ohio law that would cut taxpayer funding to 28 Planned Parenthood clinics, holding that conditions it imposed that denied funds to abortion providers were unconstitutional. But campaigners against abortion rights are unlikely to be deterred.

Sanders Blasts Trump Nominee Over Religious Post

Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont this week lambasted one of President Donald Trump's budget nominees over a post he wrote last year that discussed Christianity and Islam. As Russell Vought, Trump's pick for deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, appeared before the Senate Budget Committee for a confirmation hearing Wednesday, Sanders doggedly questioned him about a January 2016 post he had published by conservative outlet The Resurgent.

Republicans hold a narrow majority in the Senate, meaning they can only afford to lose a few votes in their push to confirm a replacement for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has touched off a partisan brawl in the Senate to confirm President Trump’s nominee to replace her, a vote that Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, has vowed to hold.

With Democrats all but certain to unite in opposition to Mr. Trump’s nominee

Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah said Tuesday he supports voting to fill the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat on the Supreme Court, all but ensuring President Donald Trump has the backing to push his choice to confirmation over Democratic objections that it’s too close to the November election

the Democrats would need four GOP defections to block consideration. Two Republicans have said they oppose taking up a nomination at this time, but no others are in sight

one of the quickest confirmation processes in modern times